Matt Twombly did two internships while at Kutztown, one at the Allentown Morning Call and another at Marvel Comics. He won the Don Breter Illustration Award when he graduated in December of 2008, entering into the worst job market in decades. He found work in Washington, D.C, as an Art Associate at Science , a weekly magazine published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general-science society. His primary job at Science is as an editorial production artist in the news department, but he has also done a number of original illustrations for the magazine.

Staying Afloat (above) is a conceptual illustration for a story about science funding. Matt says the news story was about “a breakdown of how federal stimulus money was being used so that university science programs, could ‘stay afloat’ and ‘weather the storm’, so to speak. ”

“Ocean Diversity (below) was the opening image for a story about why there are far fewer species in the oceans than on the land. Something like 85% of visible species live on land. There are several theories as to why this is, and the story goes into some details, but for an effective banner image, I just went large and tried to show the stark contrast between speciation in the sea and on the land.”

Asked about his working methods, Matt says, “Both illustrations started with pencils. In the case of these two, I inked them by hand as well, then scanned them and I did colors in Photoshop.”

Besides his work at Science, Matt has also found time to collaborate on a comic book project with a writer he met at Marvel, Karl Bollers. At this point they don’t yet have a publisher, but Matt will keep us posted.